


Beyond Redemption

by LacrimaDraconis



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-15
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:18:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LacrimaDraconis/pseuds/LacrimaDraconis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damon has a lot to think about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond Redemption

_**TVD-fic: Beyond Redemption (Damon, Damon/Elena implied, Damon/Katherine implied)**_  
 **Title:** Beyond Redemption  
 **Author:**[](http://lacrimadraconis.livejournal.com/profile)[ **lacrimadraconis**](http://lacrimadraconis.livejournal.com/)    
 **Character / Pairing:** Damon, Damon/Elena implied, Damon/Katherine implied  
 **Spoilers:** season 1  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Word count:** ~ 1900  
 **Summary:** Damon has a lot to think about.  
 **Disclaimer:** Written for fun, not for profit.

 **A/N:** This takes place directly after Damon "just disappeared" on Founders' Day and before he turns up in Jeremy's room. It's a companion piece to[ Turning Points](http://community.livejournal.com/hallelujah_goat/3579.html) in which Elena reflects on her relationship with Damon.

Betaed as always by [](http://wattle-neurotic.livejournal.com/profile)[**wattle_neurotic**](http://wattle-neurotic.livejournal.com/)  because she's awesome!

Damon was walking slowly through the night into the direction of the Gilbert house. He didn’t feel the need to vampire speed there after all that he’d been through in the past hour. He wasn’t even sure if he could anyway, he still felt the vervain pulsing through his body.

He had watched Anna die and he had never felt so helpless in his life. He had wanted to save her, desperately, but he couldn’t. Her death seemed so unnecessary to him. She was just Anna; a girl who wanted her mother back and live a normal life. And then John Gilbert had staked her and Damon couldn’t do anything about it.

All these things were rushing through his head at once, taking their toll on him. He felt drained and weak and confused and it made him uncomfortable because Damon didn’t do weak and confused. And Damon didn’t do emotions.

That switch, which allowed him to shut off all humanity and all those inconvenient feelings which came along with it, worked in a very strange way. It didn’t make the emotions go away completely; in fact they were still there and even quite prominently so. But he didn’t feel them. It was as if he had an outsider’s point of view on the things he did himself.

All the pain he inflicted on others - he saw it and it registered, but he didn’t feel it. There was no guilt, no remorse, but neither was there joy or happiness.

His love for Katherine had never been in question, of course. How could he have pursued his diabolical master plan of bringing her back, if the love had been shut off? He had loved her all these years, obsessing over her and waiting for the right time, but missing her simply didn’t hurt like a bitch with that handy little switch firmly in place.

Over the last few weeks though, or even months to be honest, he had felt it wavering. There had been flashes of feelings washing over him, little waves of something he couldn’t quite identify, making his chest tight.

She had used those words, repeating his own phrases from over a century ago exactly. Those words that made him understand.  “You did this. This is your fault.”

Elena had said this to him, when she sat there bleeding, waiting for him next to a vampire corpse which had been Vickie Donovan not too long ago. When they had taken away Katherine from him due to Stefan’s betrayal, he had hissed the same words to his brother. He remembered what it had felt like, seeing Katherine getting arrested, the ache and fear, the hate and regret to trust Stefan in the first place, all mixed together.

Too many emotions came rushing back, too strong and too much all at once to keep them securely tucked away behind that wall.

When Elena accused him of turning Vickie and generally raising hell around Mystic Falls, he had played it down, perfectly composed on the outside and wiping her accusations away.

 “You must have confused me for someone with remorse. None of this matters to me,” he had scoffed, but somehow she had seen right through him.

 “People die around you. It matters and you know it.”

He couldn’t deny that her words had some impact on him because he had felt the surprising urge to make things right with her. Compelling Jeremy to make him better, to take away his suffering, had been something only he was able to do, and he didn’t hesitate a second after Elena had confirmed it was what she wanted.

The thing is, Damon had never seen Elena as a substitute for Katherine. Not for one single moment.

Sure, they didn’t only look similar, they were practically doppelgangers. He saw that and of course she reminded him of his time with Katherine in some way, but their personalities couldn’t have been more different.

Where Katherine had been fierce and selfish, Elena was kind and always trying to see the good in the people around her. Even in him, though he didn’t think there were any redeemable qualities to find. Yet he had been intrigued by Elena and there was something drawing him to her. Something about her caught his attention, as if she was silently calling out to him. He kind of liked her beyond wanting to piss off Stefan or mess with people just for the fun of it.

Elena always stood her ground and she had never shown any sign of real fear of him, not even after she learned about what he was, who he was and what he had done.

It made her interesting, seeing a human who wasn’t afraid of him but instead dared to tell him off and bitch at him, contrary to just running from him as fast as possible. As everyone else did.

She wasn’t bad company either, and he did have a good time with her, coaxing out the fun side of Elena which she had obviously buried beneath a lot of issues.

Damon had wanted to make her forget her problems for a couple of hours, let everything go and just enjoy herself. He had promised her that she was safe with him and he had been genuine in that moment. As much as he loved toying with her to make her uncomfortable or flirting with her to annoy both her and his brother, he knew he would protect her no matter what.

And for whatever reason, she cared about him, seemed to consider him worthy of being saved back in Atlanta when that raging psycho of Lexi’s boyfriend attacked him, and also today.

Admittedly, he could understand Lexi’s significant other; if Damon had been in his shoes, he would have killed him, end of story. And even if Stefan might not believe him, he was sorry for killing the vampire girl. Kind of. It had been part of his plan and he had sacrificed her willingly to serve his greater agenda, but still. Maybe he wouldn’t do it again. Or actually, he definitely wouldn’t do it again because he had done it for Katherine and for her only. To get her back and finally spend eternity with her, as they had planned 146 years ago.

And then he had found out. Katherine had never been in that tomb. She had manipulated a fucking guard and left. Left Mystic Falls and left him. And not once in over a freaking century did it occur to her to let him know she was still out there.

So much for her love.

He had gone through a lot to rescue her; waiting for the comet, killing people who got in his way, only to learn that Katherine had never cared about him in the first place.  
   
He had even threatened Elena after she double-crossed him, and that betrayal? That had hurt. Stefan, he could deal with. They had too much of a history of taunting each other that it didn’t come as much of a surprise. But Elena, she had gotten to him, had crawled under his skin and he had believed there was something between them. He had been so angry, but even when he forced his blood down her throat, threatening to snap her neck, deep down he knew that he couldn’t hurt her. Didn’t want to hurt her. And she must have seen it because she had been honest and sincere when she came to apologize. He wanted to trust her for reasons he didn’t understand himself, but he did. An understanding she had called it, and maybe she was right.

He had realized over the weeks that the hate he felt towards this small town and its inhabitants slowly seemed to have dissipated.  There was mainly indifference, but Damon had to admit certain people had caught his interest. The teacher for example. Alaric Saltzman had come to town to kill him, due to false information as it turned out, but Damon could still see his reasons.

He had almost regretted killing him because he could relate to the whole “woman who screwed me over” thing, but then Alaric had come back from the dead anyway. Which naturally had Damon annoyed but he probably shouldn’t complain about dead people staying dead. As it turned out, Alaric wasn’t all that bad. A good guy, sure, but bad ass enough to team up with a vampire to hunt other vampires and they shared a certain love for bourbon during day time.

Good enough for Damon since he didn’t do the whole friends thing anyway.

Except for Elena maybe. They probably were friends of some kind. Damon wouldn’t know; it wasn’t that he ever had any friends before. But when it came to Elena, he couldn’t help feeling that this might go a lot deeper than friendship. He had felt it when they danced, a connection of some sorts that had made him focus only on her. She had smiled at him so openly, and he never wanted it to stop. They had grown comfortable around each other, a mixture of slight bantering and genuine care between them even when Stefan wasn’t there.

Isobel probably hadn’t been entirely wrong when she blurted out that he was in love with his brother’s girlfriend, drawing one more similarity between her and Katherine. Damon wouldn’t call it love though, that was a very powerful word, and it was one that he had only ever connected with Katherine so far. And this connection had poisoned it for him.

He was sure that he felt something for Elena and he knew that this something was strong, but Elena was with Stefan now and even though he loved to mock his brother with the whole, “I’m here to eat cotton candy and steal your girl” talk, he still respected Elena’s choice. For now.

She saw him as a friend and he would not risk this thing they had. As much of a manipulative bastard he might be, Damon would never try to push Elena in one direction or another. He had always seen her as independent, as someone who formed her own opinion regardless of what other people told her or wanted her to believe. So it was her decision to make and her choice alone, because this wasn’t about him simply wanting her, but him wanting her to choose him. She had awoken feelings in him that had been buried for a very long time and maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.

He still thought that he didn’t have any good in him, that the whole deal with caring about people and protecting his town wasn’t really in him, but maybe he could try.

“Doing the right thing only counts when it comes from your desire to do the right thing. Not when you want to score points for Elena.”

Stefan had said something like this to him only a couple of hours ago, and finally standing in front of the Gilbert house, Damon decided that maybe he should do just that. The right thing. Maybe offering help to Jeremy and leaving the boy the choice for once would help Damon to keep the remains of the shaky ground that he walked on together.

Comments make me so happy, you have no idea!


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